The President's Message

January 2016

by Lisa Toth, President

Established 1987

"Promoting the Harmony of Computer Education, and Camaraderie"

The board voted and the electronic newsletter will start with the March issue. To make sure you get the link in your email please send your preferred email address to me at president@cipcug.org.

Some members have requested an email reminding them of the meeting each month. To be on the reminder list, go to cipcug.org. On the right side of the home page you will see a box entitled “Latest Page Revisions.” Click on “SIGINFO.” Toward the bottom you will see “Click here to sign up for the mailing list to receive SIGINFO reminders prior to each SIG.” Click on the word “here” and enter your email address. You will then get the reminders.

December’s presentation was by Bart Koslow. He talked about calibre, pronounced caliber. Turns out it is a great program for managing your e-books. I’ve been collecting a few of those so I’m planning to download that and give it a try.

This month’s presentation is on the perfect backup. Craig has booked Elliott Stern, a computer counselor with Maestro Computing Services. This is a topic we all need to pay attention to and one Toby and Michael have stressed over and over. For a few years I worked for a software company that wrote software for radio and television. It was for the contracts for commercial air time and covered the scheduling of the commercials that once played became accounts receivable. The software also covered accounts payable and general ledger. We had a daily backup routine that we tried to get the clients to adhere to. Back in those days, problems were much more frequent than they are today, and we stressed the importance of the backup. Backups were not the trivial thing they are today. It took a long time depending on their system. I dreaded the calls from clients who were having a problem requiring a recovery from backup. Most of the clients were diligent about the backup process, but a few were not. Now and then I’d get a call from someone who hadn’t backed up for a few days or more. I couldn’t recover what they had not backed up. More than once, there was crying on the other end of the phone. So if there is anything on your computer you would miss if there was a bad crash, BACK UP YOUR DATA!